From We-think: mass innovation, not mass production by Charles Leadbeater
This excerpt is from Chapter One: You are what you share, pp. 3-4 (available on the We-think website)
This book is about how we can make the most of the web’s potential to spread democracy, promote freedom, alleviate inequality and allow us to be creative together, en mass. The web’s potential for good stems from the open, collaborative and even communal culture it inherited where it started in academia and the counter culture of the 1960s, combined with pre-industrial ingredients it has resurrected, folk culture and the commons as a shared basis for productive endeavour. The web allows for a massive expansion in individual participation in culture and the economy. More people than ever will be able to take part, adding their voice, their piece of information, their idea to the throng. Greater individual participation will not, on its own, add up to much unless it is matched by a capacity to share and then combine our ideas. In the last thirty years the spread of the market, the collapse of communism, the travails of the public sector have elevated private ownership as the best way to organise virtually everything. The spread of the web invites us to look at the future from a different vantage point, to see that what we share is at least as important as what we own; what we hold in common is as important as what we keep for ourselves; what we choose to give away may matter more than what we charge for. In the economy of things you are identified by what you own: your land, house, car. In the economy of ideas that the web is creating, you are what you share: who you are linked to, who you network with and which ideas, pictures, videos, links, comments you share. The biggest change the web will have on us is to allow us to share with one another in new ways and particularly to share ideas. That matters because the more ideas are shared the more they breed, mutate and multiply, and that process is the ultimate source of our creativity, innovation and well being. This book is a defence of sharing, particularly the sharing of ideas. The web matters because it allows more people to share ideas with more people in more ways. That web’s underlying culture of sharing, decentralisation and democracy, makes the it an ideal platform for groups to self organise, combining their ideas and know how, to create together games, encyclopaedias, software, social networks, video sharing sites or entire parallel universes. That culture of sharing also makes the web difficult for governments to control and hard for corporations to make money from. In reality creativity has always been a highly collaborative, cumulative and social activity in which people with different skills, points of view and insights, share and develop ideas together. At root most creativity is collaborative. It is not usually the product of a flash of insight from a lone individual. The web gives us a new way to organise and expand this collaborative activity. The factory made possible mass production, mass consumption and with that industrial working class. The web could make innovation and creativity a mass activity that engages millions of people. The developed world in the 20th was preoccupied by organising and reorganising the mass production system, its factories, industrial relations systems, working practices, supply chains. Our preoccupation in the century to come will be how to create and sustain a mass innovation economy in which the central issues will be how more people can collaborate more effectively in creating new ideas.
From We-think: mass innovation, not mass production by Charles Leadbeater
This excerpt is from Chapter One: You are what you share, pp. 3-4 (available on the We-think website)
This book is about how we can make the most of the web’s potential to spread democracy, promote freedom, alleviate inequality and allow us to be creative together, en mass. The web’s potential for good stems from the open, collaborative and even communal culture it inherited where it started in academia and the counter culture of the 1960s, combined with pre-industrial ingredients it has resurrected, folk culture and the commons as a shared basis for productive endeavour. The web allows for a massive expansion in individual participation in culture and the economy. More people than ever will be able to take part, adding their voice, their piece of information, their idea to the throng. Greater individual participation will not, on its own, add up to much unless it is matched by a capacity to share and then combine our ideas. In the last thirty years the spread of the market, the collapse of communism, the travails of the public sector have elevated private ownership as the best way to organise virtually everything. The spread of the web invites us to look at the future from a different vantage point, to see that what we share is at least as important as what we own; what we hold in common is as important as what we keep for ourselves; what we choose to give away may matter more than what we charge for. In the economy of things you are identified by what you own: your land, house, car. In the economy of ideas that the web is creating, you are what you share: who you are linked to, who you network with and which ideas, pictures, videos, links, comments you share. The biggest change the web will have on us is to allow us to share with one another in new ways and particularly to share ideas. That matters because the more ideas are shared the more they breed, mutate and multiply, and that process is the ultimate source of our creativity, innovation and well being. This book is a defence of sharing, particularly the sharing of ideas.
The web matters because it allows more people to share ideas with more people in more ways.
That web’s underlying culture of sharing, decentralisation and democracy, makes the it an ideal platform for groups to self organise, combining their ideas and know how, to create together games, encyclopaedias, software, social networks, video sharing sites or entire parallel universes. That culture of sharing also makes the web difficult for governments to control and hard for corporations to make money from.
In reality creativity has always been a highly collaborative, cumulative and social activity in which people with different skills, points of view and insights, share and develop ideas together. At root most creativity is collaborative. It is not usually the product of a flash of insight from a lone individual. The web gives us a new way to organise and expand this collaborative activity.
The factory made possible mass production, mass consumption and with that industrial working class. The web could make innovation and creativity a mass activity that engages millions of people. The developed world in the 20th was preoccupied by organising and reorganising the mass production system, its factories, industrial relations systems, working practices, supply chains. Our preoccupation in the century to come will be how to create and sustain a mass innovation economy in which the central issues will be how more people can collaborate more effectively in creating new ideas.